Author and host of the hit OUTDOOR CHANNEL show SHOOTING GALLERY spouts off...

Friday, May 01, 2009

We've Survived!

No vamps, no witches, no werewolves and nary a zombie in sight! Yes, we have survived another Walpurgis...thank heavens for garlic!

Since I was feeling better, the Sweetie and I went to the range yesterday and spent a couple of hours in cowboy action practice (yes, mostly .22s). Was, as usual, wonderful fun. Was seriously pissed off to see the shooting area had been mildly trashed...one wonders what some of these stupid SOBs use for brains? Lots of beer cans...let me catch you drinking and shooting and I'll be calling some of my pals at the Sheriff's Department...I'll be grinning when they haul your ass off to jail. Disgusting!

Meanwhile, here's a really interesting piece on Our Sad Brothers Across the Pond from Peter Hitchens:

Well, I said I would be misrepresented when I voiced doubts about 'gun control', and I duly was, by a contributor who seems keen to legalise a drug that destroys the brains of the young, but regards it as unthinkable to allow individuals to own guns. He says I am a 'gun nut'. Does that make him a 'dope nut'? Perhaps, though I doubt he will see it that way. Well, I don't see it his way either. Here's why.

Presumably he imagines that my house is crammed with firearms and ammunition, and that I salivate over gun porn in my bullet-proof bunker. I'm sorry to disappoint him but I neither own any guns nor wish to do so.[...]Since we foolishly abolished the formal death penalty, imposed after a careful trial, we have transferred the power of capital punishment to an increasingly armed police force (though no legislation has ever actually been passed to arm them, and the pretence is still maintained that they are unarmed). That police force is now the arm of the liberal state - rather than enforcers of conservative law (which is why it is nowadays called a 'service') - and so has a much wider licence to use (liberal) violence than ordinary conservative citizens. Contrast the police force's zealous efforts to stamp out private gun ownership with its own rather poor efforts at responsible gun use, as a result of which quite a few people (one stark naked in a well-lit room) have been shot by mistake or as a result of over-reaction by armed officers...But if we didn't have an armed police force, and left executions to the hangman, then these things would be a lot less likely.

But what concerns me is that members of the public in the same situation are judged so much more harshly if they make such mistakes. And, perhaps more important, how police shootings are widely accepted, though they are summary, often erroneous and inadequately investigated. Whereas a society which finds this summary execution acceptable gets into a pseudo-moral lather about the idea of lawful execution after due process, jury trial, the possibility of appeal and reprieve.

This brings me back to the USA. Americans are not so infantilised as we are. For many reasons, mainly the fact that it is still possible to live genuinely rural lives in large parts of the country, Americans are less likely to rely on others to protect them or their homes from danger.

This used to be true of us too (again I must urge those who are interested to read the relevant chapter in 'Brief History*')

In the hardware arena, the guys over at the Firearms Blog are showing an "auto-indexing shotgun loader" that looks like the manually rotated multi-tube shotguns shown at SHOT a couple of years ago. Looks heavy!

I liked the system I looked at a couple of years ago..we'll see about this one. Here's the direct link to XRAIL. You'd need all those extra rounds Rob Haught says are in the store to feed this baby!

11 comments:

Have you commented on the horrible mass murder committed in the assasination attempt on the Dutch royal family? It seems a despondent, recently laid off 38 year-old male aimed his gun, I mean car, at a crowd of people and fired, I mean floored the accelerator killing four people. Doesn't this further illustrate the common sense notion that guns, I mean cars should be outlawed?

The validity of an assault vehicle ban goes without saying. The vehicles meeting the criteria Dave outlines only belong on the battlefields on foreign soil. However, why would an individual citizen have need of even a car with an engine of less than 2.4L either. Hello, our government provides us with public transportation. Leave the role transportation to the professional bus drivers who have gone through the proper training and have the experience to deal with road rage.

What if every citizen where allowed to openly drive a car? It would be like the wild west. People with a tendancy for mental illness definitely should not be allowed near a car. Don't get me started on the "autotrader loophole" or the potential "domestic terrorists" that prefer air travel and direct flights.

What about these killing zones they call "safe zones"? Sidewalks. An "active driver" knows nobody on a sidewalk will have a car of their own to defend themselves. And they locate those sidewalks right next to areas where there are cars. Unbelievable.